Teaching Assistants Career trajectories and Foundation degrees: the affective costs of work-based lifelong learning'

This paper presents some issues that have emerged from an ongoing three year research project that explores the personal and professional life experiences of teaching assistants working in the primary, secondary and special school sectors who have either graduated or have embarked upon a foundation degree in Supporting Teaching and Learning at Edge Hill University. One of the aims of our research was to find out if doing a foundation degree had, as the foundation degree website claims, kick-started careers (2007). Throughout our research to date we decided to use a range of research methods, including questionnaires, case studies and focus group discussion. This paper primarily focuses upon the dialogue generated within the focus groups